A couple of years ago, I read my first book by this small, non-profit independent publisher across the Atlantic. It was called Unidentified Man at Left of Photo by Jeff Bursey and it was a unique reading experience. I can safely say the same about these two books. (Which is a good thing!)

Apastoral: a mistopia by Lee D. Thompson

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a human brain inside an animal? Specifically, livestock? If so, this is a book for you. It may also be for you if you enjoy literature that could be described as ‘offbeat.’ Books like this, this or this.

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, in a country that is being led by a narcissistic buffoon, a new experiment is underway. One in which a convicted criminal is punished by transplanting their brain into livestock such as pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. They’re being called ‘constock’. (But not without some discussion around what term would be best: Crainimals, Cranimals, Crimcrams, and Penitentacles were possibilities that were ultimately decided against.) At this point in the experiment, the procedure is irreversible. The other feature worth mentioning is that the hindbrains of the animals remain, meaning their animal instincts are in constant conflict with the human forebrain.

A man named Bones is the unfortunate small-time criminal who is at the center of Apastoral. He has been wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to become a sheep (a choice of animal that, I think, suits him well). In a desperate attempt to get his human life back, his plan is to escape from the farm and find the nearest phone, call the ‘advocacy for animals’ woman, and then… What he’ll do then is not completely thought out yet – How will he hold the phone? How will he speak? It’s hard enough just to fight against the sheep instinct to turn back to the familiarity and safety of the farm.

As a (long-ago) biology major, I was especially interested in the interplay between the human brain and the hindbrain of the sheep. Thompson does a marvelous job of reminding us that this is not just a human brain in a sheep’s body, it’s a human and a sheep inside a sheep’s body – a humansheep/sheephuman.

Sitting, I nibbled on this, that, chewing, looking around, chewing. Grasses aren’t so bad. After a while you start to notice the subtle changes in flavour, depending on the age of the grass and the type of the grass. The flavours are green, green-green, yellow-green, and brown-green. And yellow-brown-green. Give a quick glance for caterpillars, lower head, and pull. Give a quick glance for inch worms, lower head, and pull.

The footsteps faded and I climbed the bank once more, found myself in the middle of the parking lot not minding the warmth under me but knowing I likely didn’t have much time. And what a struggle it was, the sheep’s need for rest and my brain’s need for escape and there as a sudden, sharp pain where forebrain met hindbrain, a white flash, so I stood there doing nothing, thoughts in a loop, thoughts looping, lie in shade, run away, lie in shade, run away, till it became lying shady runaway, then lion Hades run this way. But where to go?

Three final thoughts on this book:

• Before reading the book, I was afraid I wasn’t going to ‘get’ it. But I did, and Thompson made sure I had fun at the same time.
• I noticed that Bones’s human companions had animal names like Goose, Weasel, and Hog while his animal companions had human names like Jack, Fergus, and Moll.
• In the end, maybe it would be nice to be a sheep.

She Sang to Them, She Sang by W.D. Clarke

What stands out most to me about this book is the use of parentheses. So many parentheses. I am willing to bet that if everything in parentheses was taken out, the book would be at least 25 percent shorter than it is. I’m not saying that the parenthetical parts of the book should be taken out, just that there are a lot of them. (Sometimes there are parentheses within the parentheses. [And sometimes the parentheses go on for more than a page.])

I appreciate all the sentences that start with ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘so’. I personally like to use these words to start sentences and like to see others do it, too. The word play in the book is also fun. For example, Katie’s “CiCiCitron” pants.

The book is narrated by three characters: Katie, Manny, and Jo. It begins with Katie, a young naive woman, married to a man named J with whom she has a toddler. Katie seems to take a sun-shiny, ‘everything is great’ attitude toward life, although one could argue that it sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself that everything is coming up roses. Katie especially seems head-over-heels about her husband J. He is just the best, gosh-darned husband anyone could have. He’s goofy, sweet, easy-going, and has the answers to life’s problems. Life with J is never dull, always a hoot.

Then J, her never-erring knight-errant, began to sing, took her hands in his and twirled her oh-so-romantically and dizzyingly about, something he almost never failed to do, every single divine day of her blessed, charmed life.

Jo is a single, middle-aged real estate agent. She has a grown daughter who maintains her distance – Jo’s not entirely sure why, but wishes to mend things with her. Jo was on her way to greatness when she got pregnant. She decided to keep her baby and make the best of it. She thought the world would see her sacrifices and reward her. She was wrong.

What an idiot! How could he–? Jesus effing Christ. Jo almost never swore, but this called for an exception: this was a f*cking (oops!) exception, and these were, now, thanks to dipshit Manny, exceptional effing times. What was Manny even thinking? She thought […] that Manny was more competent than this. She must have been wrong! And if there was one thing […] that she could not tolerate, it was incompetence… Problem: being wrong about Manny’s incompetence was perhaps itself a form of incompetence, and it made Jo really angry that Manny had put her in the position of being angry with herself like this.

Smooth-talking, fast-talking Manny works for Jo, but has big plans for himself. That is, if he can keep his mind on the job and stay out of trouble.

Well, it never quite came out of his mouth with the kind of crystal coherence that it maintained in his mind, did it? It was not only ‘something to work on’; it was also ‘all a work in progress’… and Manny could tell by observing his own thought processes and speech patterns and body language more and more and more that he’d probably had one or two too many coffees, etc, that morning–and-slash-but he had reason for that, though, not an excuse: that he’d been up late haggling over a deal with his mother […] and he’d needed the boost, of the caffeine and the PseudoFed [sic] and the […] then, but now? But now he saw that his hand was shaking… and so the only worry, really, was that maybe the Kazans saw it too.

The reader gets a thorough look at the inner lives of these characters as the author excels in stream-of-consciousness. And the characters seem to love to listen to themselves think. (Or maybe we all think that much?) The reader gets the distinct idea that they are all kidding themselves. (And that the author might even be mocking them a bit. [Lovingly, of course.])

What’s the most “offbeat” book you’ve read lately?

Thank you to Lee D. Thompson, W.D. Clarke, and the publisher for sending me copies of these books!